I understand that TD needs to vary his comments, and for whatever its worth this quotable jibe at Norman livens up what would be a dull by the numbers read without some personality.
I got to thinking what other architects would really be offended by. I may not be the guy to wonder this, because from what I can see, I am generally a little harder to offend. I mean, hey, I participate here, where you treat architects not named Doak, Hanse or CC, about like a baby treats its diaper.
We probably want a fair review, and we probably think our work, flaws and all, deserves something more than a one PP sound bite, along with an number. In reality, most here would think the same, but the general public probably doesn't agree. This is still not aimed at this audience as much as a guy who wants to know in ten seconds whether veering off to see some lesser known course is worthwhile.
From an architects POV, if Tom gave some depth, like "The routing is good, except for holes XXX, but the feature design looks modern and the site calls for traditional" or something to that effect, most would probably accept a critique of certain features pretty well. (thinking of a course like Torrey Pines here) Hard to get mad at calling out the best holes, the lesser holes, etc. All courses have them. Perhaps covering basics like "it is a low budget country course" so you aren't comparing directly to Augusta would help both travelers and architect junkies.
And, for the most part, TD did that in the second edition. I also suspect an older wiser TD would do even more of the same now. I recall being surprised at how balanced it was, given all the press it had gotten. But I do recall some architects just thought (and even in the new media world, think) that no criticisms should be leveled by fellow architects, even if wearing a reviewers hat.
For the record, he only mentioned a few of my courses in the first one (only had a few to mention at that point) and I wasn't offended by his comments. Next year, of course, that might change......
